What Is the Canon Rebel?

The Canon Rebel is a line of digital cameras created by Canon. Designed with serious amateur photographers in mind, the cameras offer many of the features of professional digital cameras such as interchangeable lenses and manual controls, but at a price much lower than that of professional cameras, so they're affordable for consumers who want to start to get more serious with their photography.

Types

There are several different models of Canon Rebel cameras on the market. All of the cameras are single lens reflex (SLR) type cameras, but each model offers users a slightly different picture resolution, memory type or feature set. All of the cameras in the line are relatively the same size, and weigh in at around 20 oz. without a lens attached. Slightly more bulky than a traditional consumer camera, a Rebel is typically around 5 by 4 by 3 inches in size without a lens.

Identification

The Canon Rebel line of digital cameras are all designated with "Canon Rebel" on the front of the camera body followed by the camera's particular model number.

Features

Canon Rebel cameras are compatible with Canon's line of interchangeable lenses. With more than 50 different lenses to choose from, photographers can easily customize their Canon Rebel to meet their personal needs. The Canon Rebel line also offers manual features that allow photographers to customize things such as the camera's ISO, F-stop and points of focus as well as 12 built-in shooting modes including Portrait, Close-up, Landscape, Sports, Night Portrait and flash on and off. The cameras have a LCD screen for reviewing pictures after you take them, a built-in flash for taking pictures in dark areas and a hot-shoe which allows you to add on your own external flash to the camera.

Benefits

Since the Canon Rebel line is geared more toward amateur photographers it also offers quite a few preset scene modes and automatic functions to help new photographers take the best pictures possible. Scene modes such as Sports, Landscape and Portrait will automatically adjust the camera's setting to take the best pictures possible in those particular scene situations.

Potential

Canon Rebel cameras are excellent "starter cameras" for photographers who want to get more serious about their photography, but aren't quite ready to spend several thousand dollars on a camera. Once photographers are able to master all the manual settings on a Canon Rebel, they will be able to easily take the next step into a more advanced and more expensive SLR.